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Martin Buber's concept of I-Thou and I-It relationships is considered one of the basic philosophical foundations of psychotherapy based on Dialogue. Therefore, I decided to try to understand what Buber writes about and how it can be applied to psychotherapeutic practice. Buber says that the personality (I) has two modes of existence: the I-It relationship and the I-Thou relationship. I-It attitude. This is a subject-object relationship. I can perceive something different from me (It), feel, analyze, highlight its properties and otherwise comprehend in experience. This is the world of things and phenomena that exist in time, space and causality. Experience always deals with the past; there is no place for presence in the present. The I-Thou relationship is a relationship with something or someone (You), which is characterized by the involvement of my entire being. You are constantly facing the Self in the present moment, which has no temporal, spatial or causal characteristics. The I-You relationship is Presence, intentionality (direction towards the Other), openness to mutual influence, there is no cognition and experience here yet, but this is accompanied by active bodily experience. To illustrate this process, Buber gives an example with the moon: “The moon, which he sees every night in the sky, does not occupy his thoughts at all, until one day... she appears before him bodily, until she approaches him, bewitching him with her infidelity flickering face... What is retained in his memory is not the visual impression of a luminous disk wandering across the sky... but first of all - the motor image-stimulus of the lunar influence that permeates the entire body, and only then, on this basis... the personal image of the moon is formed , having an impact...then it can be represented as an object."Here he shows the peculiarity of not only the I-Thou relationship, but also how it later turns into the I-It, becoming our experience. To illustrate the innate desire for an I-Thou relationship, Buber gives an example with a baby: The child constantly looks around and moves its limbs until it encounters something. For him it is not yet an object, because his I has not yet appeared. Initially, this is an intention towards a relationship (an outstretched hand, a wandering gaze), then a Meeting occurs and a “relationship with the one standing” (the prototype of You). And only after this does differentiation of sensations arise and the emergence of the I-It relationship. What is the significance of all this for psychotherapy? Within the framework of this concept, one can imagine neurosis or any intrapersonal conflict of the client as a violation in one or both modes of I-being or in their interrelation. F. Perls in his seminars proposed, as an exercise, alternating concentration on different zones of awareness: internal (bodily) and external (observable), drawing an analogy with breathing (inhalation-exhalation). Based on the above, we can propose the following therapeutic hypothesis within the framework of the Gestalt approach, aimed at restoring the processes of I-You and I-It relationships. 1. The I-Thou relationship requires living a shared presence, where the client and therapist are fully involved with their entire being in the present moment. Without evaluation, without interpretation, without expectations, both are open to mutual influence and focused not on themselves, but on what is happening between them (Between is another important concept in Buber’s concept, which can be correlated with the concepts of “boundary-contact” in Gestalt- therapy). 2. I-It relationship is the ability to realize sensations, feelings, ideas, desires and other phenomena that arise in the process of I-You relationship. This is the process of receiving and assimilating experience (the cycle of experience in Gestalt therapy). These two types of relationships can be reproduced many times during the therapeutic contact, flowing into one another. At different stages of this work, specific barriers can be recognized that create difficulties in the free flow of these processes. I am writing in my TG channel The Wrong Psychologist

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